


Accidental Acolyte

by iwantcandy2



Series: Have you heard the good news? [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Asexual Character, Cult of the Signless Sufferer, Gen, Original Character(s), Resistance, Science Fiction, Sea Trolls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-25
Updated: 2014-07-25
Packaged: 2018-02-10 07:35:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2016480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwantcandy2/pseuds/iwantcandy2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A scholarly troll unwittingly discovers an ancient and seditious cult. High-speed shenanigans ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Accidental Acolyte

**Author's Note:**

> Just more world-building around the Signless cult. I was thinking about how a cult as underground as the Signless's would gain new members, and this was the result. Also seadwellers who aren't total assholes. Well, okay, kind of assholes, but not stuck up.

Your name is Thenar, and you always knew your brain would end up getting you killed. You just didn’t expect it to be this soon.

You are: 8 sweeps, violet blood, seadwelling royalty, studying biomechanical enhancement at the military academy, have a lusus from the order Semaeostomeae, horns curving sharply over your head to almost meet at the tips and form a heart (the irony of which is not lost on your concupscient-disinclined self), uninterested in social interaction, in possession of a Dewey decimal sylladex, crave knowledge with a fearsome appetite, and are currently being hunted down by a squad of 4 (four) class VLIXXI security drones.

The sum of these parts = slim to infentisimal chances that you will live long enough to see dawn. At least you won’t have to worry about finding cover from the sun! That is a positive thought to focus on as you huddle in the frigid waters of the tundra swamp, listening for the distant whirr of the drones’ elevation rings.

The series of events that led you here? A suspicious internet search history, several seditious forum posts, and the innocous posting of images that you now know to contain highly illegal iconography. What can you say? The truth is out there. And you were going to find it, no matter how many red flags were waved in your face.

You are prepared to die. In fact, it is already a foregone conclusion. Your abhorrence of the mating act and inablility to participate in slurry-making meant that your life was slated to end on the day of your first scheduled genetic contribution. You had made peace with that, resigning yourself to spending your last few months glutting yourself on knowledge.

“How very dangerous a thing knowledge can be! How intoxicating the taste, that those who try are doomed to feast until they burst.” – Troll Marshall Bruce Mathers III.

Such is your fate. Instead of dying standing up for your beliefs, you are going to be martyred for someone else’s. Stupid hokey religion. What did it ever do for you?

You breifly consider trying to explain that you have no interest in this anti-imperialist cult. You were simply curious. You had stumbled upon a very old tome of pre-expansionist history, and were intrigued by the heavy censorship the book had suffered. The very cause of post-adolecent exile was glossed over. Like a barkbeast to vomit, you had to snuff it up, dig deeper. Thus you used your resources to learn about the Great Uprising of the Lowbloods, led by a figure called the Summoner.

From there, a trail of bread crumbs. You found more documentation of the Summoner in the Archives of War. The highbloods, while loathe to acknowldge past defeats, did document the final battle in which they were victorious over their winged enemy. In their self-stroking, ego-inflating accounts of their cunning, they mentioned espionage used to acquire the travel plans of the rebellion, which they used to ambush their enemy. A document claimed to be written by the Summoner himself instructs all troops to move to “the hill of the holy martyr.”

And where did this mysterious, intrigueing hill lie? Your trail might have gone cold if you had possessed the ordinary cerebral output of your peers. But using your mighty powers of being able to do some actual fucking research, gog it’s not that hard how do most people manage to line their waste chute up with the load gaper when they can’t even figure out how to open a glubbing book how are you the smartest person you’ve ever met in this entire aggravating braindead world some days you just want to-

Um. Ahem. To get back on track. You looked up the name of the final  battle in the Databse of Alternian Conquest. Indeed, the rebels’ final stand took place next to a rocky outcrop, only seven cycles away from the ruins of the ancient palace. From there, books could tell you no more. So instead you went on a field trip! Yay field trips! You visited the hills, located next to scenic nothing important or suspicious at all. However, this referenced “martyr” fascinated you. So you chased after its phantom with pick and shovel, unearthing the site. What you found was…not very impressive. Anything interesting probably decayed, returned to the earth, grew up again, was eating by bleatbeasts, and shat out hundreds of years before you got there. All you found was a stone tablet, with an engraving that looked like it was written by a three sweeps old girl:

 :’ εε< i still remempurr.

        -

It was signed with a symbol, a little circle with a curling tail.

Not that hard to look up the symbol in a genealogy database, and find all trolls associated with said symbol from the beginnging of written history (really, all it took to find your ancestor was the click of a button. That’s why access to the database was restricted to royalty. Because everyone else in this universe was an asshole that didn’t believe in the free exchange of knowledge).

 You cross-referenced the symbol with the time of the Summoner. Nothing. So you traced it back, finding the chronilogically closest troll with that symbol to. There she was. Name: Felida Leijon. Title: REDACTED.

Ah, the tell-tale sign of Imperial censorship. Really, if you weren’t looking closely, you might not even be able to tell that they had altered anything at oh for the love of the Condescension herself who do these peole think they are fooling you would have to be in the act of removing your gray matter through your nasal cavity to not notice such obvious censorship this is why we can’t have nice things everyone in the empire is an idiot.

You troogle her name. You find ancient medical records, a birth and death certificate, some other old documents, and a username on trollfiction.net. Apparently someone thought Felida Leijon was a great penname. Maybe a descendant? You check out their profile, to find nothing but hundreds of sappy lovepoems. Their titles read with all the beauty of a stray chunk of toothpaste caught on your collar.

our love is eternal <3<3<3<3

as long as i have breath ill write what you said

II-since you left for the stars-II

trying to remember the last time i held you

i hold your leggings close and try to remember your scent (ew)

that one time we laughed til we cried

you didnt want a sign but i gave you one anyway

 

 

That last one sounds slightly less sappy than the others. You click the link and read:

 

 

 

you said it didnt matter

the blank space on your chest

your signlessness made you different

-not better- than the rest

you didnt want to play their game

their caste and class

your mark of shame

and i never minded that i

didnt have a shape to trace

until you died and left me here

this cold and lonesome space

and now when i talk of you 

i cant bear to see your face 

theres too much its much too raw

this pain thats in your place

6 times i tried to join you

9 times i visited your grave

No more can i picture you

this symbol will replace

 

 

 

 

You’ve never been one for poetry, but you’re fairly sure the rhyme scheme was thought up by some internet dwelling detritus-swiller who never studied actual literary form besides the occasional sweaty fanfiction. Still, the tone was more morbid that you were expecting.

 

It seems unlikely that this poetry is connected to the original Felida, seeing as how her date of death is an epoch before the popularization of the internet. However, you have nothing else to go on, so you copy and paste the symbol at the end into your search engine.

 

No results. Out of the billions of articles on the internet, this symbol is nowhere to be found. Once again, Imperial censorship at its fines. Thoroughly frustrated, you start pasting the symbol into every chatroom you frequent, looking for answers.

 

You got some, mostly in the form of people telling you you are as good as dead, that you might as well get ready for your imminent culling, all from people adamantly denying any knowledge of the symbol, but telling you that your own ignorance couldn't save you.

 

One message stands out, a solitary email with no visible sender. The subject line: IF YOU WANT TO LIVE

 

The contents:

 

**Welcome to the brotherhood. Your life is now forfeit in the eyes of the empire. If you would choose a life of devotion over painful death, flee as soon as you get this message. Meet at the coordinates below. Bring no trace of your caste or your old life, and the brotherhood will give you a new one.**

 

Peculiar, but by no means the strangest chain mail you’ve ever gotten. You would have deleted it if it hadn’t been for the sudden blaring of your perimeter alarms, telling you that several mid-sized targets were approaching fast. With panic making your thought process a blurry mess, you did the only thing you could think of: you hopped on your stellar scooter and proceeded to have one of the most epic, claw-biting, adrenline-inducing high-speed chases paradox space will ever witness. But you aren’t going to go into detail on that.

 

Instead, you are here in the sub-zero waters of the Aninatic Swamp. Due to a naturally-occuring alcohol source, these waters have a vastly lower freezing point than normal. If you weren’t submerged in it, you would probably find this fascinating. As it is, you think you are getting hypothermia. Also, the alcohol burns your gills, making it hard to breath. You are either going to drown or freeze to death. You aren’t sure which would be more humiliating.

 

But lo! Perhaps you won’t live long enough to suffer _either._ Above, you feel the water ripple, disturbed by the churning of some sort of anti-gravity propulsion. This is it. The drones have found you. You would flee, but you can’t feel your legs. You close your eyes and wait for the end.

 

Something roughly grabs your horn and tugs. Like a morbidly obese fish on a hook, you thrash sluggishly, your limbs having all the strength of a shiver. There is a second when your cranium screams with the pressure, as your body is caught in a tug-of-war between the frozen sludge at your heels and the force on your horns. You cough and burble. Most likely you are trying to scream, but even you can’t be sure.

 

Finally, there is a slow release at your feet, the soil giving outward with a sigh. You are hauled out of the water to stare death in the face.

 

Death does not look anything like a drone. As a matter of fact, death looks like a goggles-wearing schooner pilot, complete with half-cocked grin.

 

“Welcome aboard,” he says. “You’re on the D.S.R. Renegade.”

 

You stare, slack-jawed and with your spittle freezing on your lips, as your brain compiles the information. 

 

“Dronsh,” you explain sluggishly. It’s the only vocabulary you can retrieve from your working memory.

 

“Don’t worry about them,” your savior laughs, extending thumb and forefinger in a crude representation of a gun. “We shot those bastards right outta the sky.”

 

He laughs manically, throwing his head back.

 

“Drimel, stop embarrasing yourself, and by proxy, me,” another voice says. You think the voice might be attached to the shadowy figure to your left, but you can’t be sure on account of your brain blue-screening. Something is draped around your shoulders, and your are hoisted to your feet. “Come on, we’ll get you warmed up.”

 

Unfortunately, that plan is foiled when you fail to successfully place one foot in front of the other. You fall to your knees with a hiccup.

 

“My head feelsh funny,” you slur, listing to one side.

 

“Swimming in alcohol will do that,” Drimel laughs, slapping you on the back. You fall onto your face with a groan.

 

“And being an asshole will get you kicked off this ship,” the other voice replies. The second troll kneels beside you and extends a hand. “I’d apologize, but it’s not my fault Drimel can’t function properly. You’ll get used to it. I’m Tyrhez.”

 

“I’m…Thenar?” you ask, trying to remember if that sounds right. “Are you…cultists?”

 

“Hell yeah!” Drimel replies, taking your arm. Tyrhez takes the other, and together they haul you to your feet. “And starting now, you’re one too.”

 

“What?” you ask, your horror dim behind your sleepiness.

 

“It’s either that or we throw you back in the water,” Tyrhez explains, no hint of an apology in his voice.

 

With a sigh, you slump against them.

 

“Viva la résistance,” you mutter.

 

They both chuckle, then cheer in union, “Viva la résistance! Remember the Sufferer!”

 

And with that, they drag you off to your new life.

**Author's Note:**

> A few notes: -Semaeostomeae is a type of jellyfish  
> -Marshall Bruce Mathers III is Eminem's real name  
> -Felidae is the latin name for the cat family. Felida is of course the troll version of this.  
> -The S.S. in ship names traditionally stood for steampower. Ships were supposed to have abbreviations that told either their power source or purpose. As such, I decided to give this ship the prefix D.S.R., which stands for "Deep space Radiation."
> 
> Anyways, I will likely never write these characters again, as their purpose was to carry a theme more than be actual characters. However, I decided that since Thenar is a biomechanical specialist, she's the one that develops the blood-altering device given to Karkat in my other story, "Don't Want a Martyr." I've said it; now it's canon.


End file.
